Charles Cushman was born in the small southern Indiana town of Poseyville in 1896. Like many other young and enterprising Midwesterners, he felt the draw of Chicago and made it his home for a large part of his adult life. But he also had a very interesting hobby.

He took pictures. Lots of pictures. Over 14,500 to be more precise – and quite a few of our fair city and lake!

When he died in 1972, he bequeathed his entire photo collection to his alma mater, Indiana University. You can check out the entire collection – taken between 1938 to 1969 – at this link.

But here are just a few swimming and lake-related ones that he took in Chicago circa 1941 – mostly around Promontory Point. As you can see, Mr. Cushman had an appreciation for feminine pulchritude!

Whenever you make a jaunt out to L1 during the warmer months, chances are quite good that you’ll see one or more of these loyal lakegoers within the vicinity. They maintain an unofficial vigilance over our beloved swimming site, and they’re always ready to offer friendly greetings or a pleasant conversation.

In short, they’re great fellows who have fascinating stories to tell. And I always enjoy seeing them out at L1 because they personify everything that’s great about summer in Chicago!

So in this spirit, I’d like to hand out some honorary Lake Monster numbers to the real “beach boys” of L1. Dave had some shots of the group taken last week, so I’ll post a few below with some details:

Before we became a wussified and hyper-litigious society, you could actually spring off of diving boards into Lake Michigan. Here is all that remains of a diving board down at 51st Street that used to provide all sorts of joy and mischief for kids of all ages:

It was hard to get going yesterday morning. These early autumn days seem more like mid-November than late September. But I was up by 7am, hammering away at the keyboard with the aid of some very strong black coffee, when I heard this god-awful screeching outside of my window.

I tried to ignore it at first, but it just intensified. Then I realized that this was some animal in serious distress. An utterly terrified, life-or-death type of distress. So I went to the window to investigate.

Three crows had surrounded a shrieking animal in the empty lot adjacent to my building and were taking their turns pecking and tearing away at it. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it sure was “down for the count.”

Three against one? That’s hardly fair. So I decided to go out there and see what all the fuss was about…

I approached the crime scene and shooed away the trio of surprisingly large and menacing crows. They scattered away as I advanced, but they hovered closely in the nearby trees, cackling indignantly and fixing me with their baleful stares.

I wasn’t quite prepared for what I saw:

Hoary bats (Lasiurus cinereus) are the most widespread bat species in the Americas. Their habitat includes most of North America from north-central Canada and extends south all the way to Central America.

Hoary bats are solitary forest dwellers that prefer evergreen trees to deciduous environments. They are nocturnal hunters who feed on insects during the evening and spend their days roosting in a torpor high above the ground. This explains why hoary bats – although quite abundant and widespread – rarely come into contact with humans.

So how did this one end up as midday crow fodder?

There are several possibilities. First, many hoary bats migrate long distances in the fall, spending the winter in the warmer regions of sub-tropical or tropical America. Apparently, it’s not that unusual for these bats to become quite exhausted from flying and fall out of their roosts onto the ground. And even if they manage to stay in the trees during the day, they are quite easily exposed to predation. This is especially the case with juveniles or young adults. And give the smaller size of this hoary bat (3-4 inches), I suspect he is still technically a “minor.”

So it’s quite likely that our little hero was unfortunately literally caught napping by some very hungry crows who frequent that empty lot.

The second possibility, while very remote, is a bit less innocent. In general, bats are not dangerous. But like any other mammal, they can carry rabies. And even though less than 1% of all bats are infected with the virus, hoary bats tend to have a higher incidence of the disease given that they sometimes prey on other bats.

So whatever happened to the bat, you might ask?

Well, I couldn’t just let him get torn apart by the crows. So I placed him in a box using some heavy winter gloves. He had calmed down considerably at that point, but I could tell that he was still in pretty bad shape. His left wing was somewhat misshapen, and from the look of things he had taken a number of very unkind jabs to the midsection from the three crows.

The little fellow slept very soundly for all of yesterday afternoon and was still in a tranquil slumber when I returned home in the early evening. He had even climbed up onto a bamboo lid I had placed in his temporary home and was roosting upside down on one leg.

Unfortunately, he didn’t make it though the night. He passed quietly in his sleep and – from the look of things – quite peacefully.

I contacted animal control this morning, and they came to take him away. The animal control officer had never seen a hoary bat, so I explained to her what it was. We both commented on how rare and unique it was to see such an animal.

But apparently they’re quite common. And as you walk underneath the trees this time of year, they’re probably right above you.

Double-crested cormorants are large waterbirds whose summer habitat includes lakes and inland waterways. They’re quite widely distributed across North America, ranging from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska down to Florida and Mexico.

Like other cormorants, they primarily eat fish which they hunt by swimming and diving. And they’re definitely built for speed and efficiency in the water. As you can see, this one moves quite nimbly when going after his prey:

Cormorants have a short, stocky body with webbed feet and a very long neck. This enables them to quickly dart through the water in pursuit of smaller fish, which they snatch with a small hook on the end of their beaks.

Here’s a shot of our friend again just after snaring a juicy morsel:

But his success as an aquatic hunter is not always welcome among many Great Lakes residents. Cormorants are voracious consumers of bait fish such as round gobies. This has adversely impacted the perch, walleye and bass populations – much to the chagrin of sport fisherman throughout the region.

And to add insult to injury, cormorants are notoriously noisy and destructive wherever they establish their highly populated breeding grounds. This has led to increasing efforts to cull the cormorant population in several parts of the Great Lakes basin.

But even if you’re not a fan of our new visitor, you can’t help but admire his talents. In fact, when you see him in action, he looks like a throwback to some prehistoric time when real lake monsters once had free reign over the large inland sea that covered most of North America.

And when you look at his skeleton, you’re even more tempted to think that they still exist:

The former “Green Town, IL” (a.k.a. Waukegan) resident and master storyteller is 90 years young today!

When I was a boy in the Midwest I used to go out and look at the stars at night and wonder about them.

I guess every boy does that.

When I wasn’t looking at the stars, I was running in my old or my brand-new tennis shoes, on my way to swing in a tree, swim in a lake, or delve in the town library to read about dinosaurs or time machines.

I guess every boy has done that, too…

The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.

There is a swim ban this weekend at all Chicago beaches due to “water quality issues.” This is because the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) opened the Wilmette and Chicago River locks at 2:30am on Saturday morning and released large quantities of sanitary sewage diluted in part by the sudden influx of stormwater.

Let’s examine how the sewage got there in the first place.

Chicago has what’s known as a combined sewer system. Under this design, all of the sanitary sewage as well as any incoming stormwater eventually makes its way to a shared outfall pipe or reservoir:

(Source EPA)

In contrast, many municipal sewer systems constructed after WWII collect and drain stormwater in drainage lines which do not mix with the sanitary sewage drainage systems. These are appropriately termed separated sewage systems:

(Source EPA)

As the first image indicates, sudden and heavy rainstorms can very often deluge a combined sewer system with excess stormwater. When this happens, the combined sewer overflows (CSOs) can overwhelm the shared outfall pipes and reservoirs and cause unwanted flooding and “backups” in both the sanitary sewage lines as well as the storm drain systems:

To prevent these occurrences – or to at least mitigate them – the city of Chicago and the MWRD designed and developed the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan, a.k.a. the “Deep Tunnel.” Commissioned in the mid-1970’s and still under construction, the TARP is essentially an expanded reservoir system for CSOs that take place during heavy rainfalls.

Unfortunately, an especially heavy rainstorm will still occasionally overwhelm the TARP.

When this happens, the MWRD will divert the excess CSOs to any number of permitted outfalls – most of which empty into the Chicago River, the Calumet River, and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

However, under sustained storm conditions, CSOs from these permitted outfalls can actually overwhelm these river and canal systems as well. Under this scenario, the MWRD will open one or more of the river locks such as the Chicago Harbor lock, the Wilmette lock, or the O’Brien lockin order to prevent flooding.

And when these locks are opened, CSOs (combined sewer overflows) enter Lake Michigan and contaminate the water.

The good news is that this doesn’t happen very often. And theoretically, this shouldn’t take place at all once the TARP is fully completed and operational by 2019 (estimated).

Believe it or not, at one point we had three nuclear missiles deployed on our lakefront right in the midst of some very densely populated areas.

It all began in 1957 during the height of the Cold War. At that time, the greatest perceived threat to the U.S. was a nuclear attack from Soviet bomber planes flying over our cities. To counter this threat, the U.S. military deployed the Nike-Ajax – and then later the Nike-Hercules – surface to air missile systems (SAMs) at numerous locations throughout the country to serve as a protective shield against such an attack. These missiles actually contained nuclear warheads and were designed to obliterate clusters of enemy bombers through an atomic air burst.

As the Cold War raged on, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union developed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) which could be launched from distances greater than 3,500 miles (5,500 km). Both superpowers, in turn, developed ICBMs which could (in theory, at least) intercept incoming enemy ICBM strikes.

All these developments essentially made the Nike-Hercules missiles obsolete. So these sites were deactivated, and the missiles were removed in the 1970’s. But until that point, the city of Chicago had Nike-Hercules missiles deployed at Belmont Harbor, Burnham Park, and Jackson Park.

This particular site was right in my neighborhood near the Belmont exit off of Lake Shore Drive (the photo says Montrose Beach – which was where the control center was located – but the actual missile was farther south at Belmont):

There was also one deployed just south of McCormick Place and a third one in Jackson Park. In fact, the radar towers for the Jackson Park site were located on Promontory Point, one of our sister swim sites:

For a more detailed look at the Chicago Nike-Hercules missile sites, be sure to check out Michael Epperson’s site (where I got the images).

And while this is now all just a historical footnote, we could have experienced this right on our lakefront during the Cold War!